


Smoke and Iron

by Iron



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Christian Tradition Lore & Folklore, Original Fiction - Fandom
Genre: Christian Mythology, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Inaccurate depictions of myths, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Polyamorous Society
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:40:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26520784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iron/pseuds/Iron
Summary: When Ladon is marked for death by Heracles, his dam and sires do the only thing they can for him: they beg Hermes to secret their son through the veil between worlds. All they want to do is keep him safe.They do not know that they are confining their hatchling to a world entirely unfamiliar to all of them, to wander through a literal Hell to be lost to a society of demons. When Malphas approaches him with offers of help, in exchange for knowledge of his world, Ladon doesn’t know enough to doubt his intentions. He certainly doesn’t know that the demon wants to makemoreof the monster he thinks Ladon is.
Relationships: Ladon/Malphas, Original Character/Original Character
Kudos: 1





	Smoke and Iron

There is a saying in Grecia: τὸ πεπρωμένον φυγεῖν ἀδύνατον. You cannot escape your destiny. 

I never knew that so well until my dam stepped into my room far past when I had told her I’d retired, dragging me from the nest with a fear in her dark eyes as I’d never seen before. When I was young I watched her raise storms through our narrow strait, sinking ships and bringing with them food enough for every inhabitant of our little enclave. She commands the Selkies and the Sirens, standing shoulder to shoulder with my sires in a world where the gods rarely allow women to do so. She has never been afraid of anything, not of sailors and their nets and hooks and spears, not even of Zeus himself. 

Now she turns to me, and all I can see is the fine tremble of her bottom lip, as if she can hardly contain herself. “Stand taller, little dragon. I need to see you well.” 

I scrub the last of the exhaustion slime from my eyes as she pulls me through the seagrass curtain that separates our dining area from the front room where we greet guests. It’s the middle of the night now, and there’s no one there; no one in my family was birthed nocturnal, and the rest of my nest is probably still sleeping like I should be.  
My sires are waiting by the door. Tritanius, my nest-sire, has an expression of drawn, old sorrow etching new lines under his many eyes. My blood-sire Phorcys is sitting on the woven chair we keep next to the door as a catch-all for whatever we might be bringing in from the trench, salvaged cloth and fishing baskets squashed until his scaled mass. It’s like he can hardly keep himself from toppling forward from the sheer weight of despair he’s feeling. For a moment the bottom of my stomach swoops low, the strength leaving my legs. 

The last time I was woken in the night, it was to learn that Heracles had taken my nephew’s head. 

Tritanius steps forward to sweep me away from my dam. His arms are as solid as they ever are, his grip as he squeezes me almost tight enough to make my ribs creak. His tail curls around my own as, for a moment, he clutches at me like I’m the last bit of coral in an empty ocean. “Sire…?” I can’t ask if they’ve found another body. I couldn’t stand to hear it. Sometimes I still think I’ll look up to see Nym crashing into the nest, complaining about his mane getting saltwater in it, his mother laughing as she coils around him.  
“Atlas,” he manages, before he shudders and stops. 

Atlas. Sire to the girls I’d been hired to protect what feels like a millennia ago. The girls I’d been forced to leave alone and unguarded, in the wake of everything. I should be there now, really, but even besides the loss of Nym, there were reasons I could not be. Losses I had suffered before I’d learned of what Heracles had done to him. The things Heracles had done to me in his damned quest. “Atlas? He didn’t – the girls – he would have called me if there were something wrong with the girls.” He’d promised I would be with my girls again.

My dam touches my shoulder as Phorcys stands to draw Tritanius into his arms. The only thing that refuses to give way is his tail, curling around my own in a deadly grip. “It’s not the Hesperides, Ladon. It’s you.” 

I shake my head. “This isn’t normal. You wouldn’t be looking at me like this if Atlas had replaced me.” 

Phorcys barks, an ugly, blunted laugh. “If only you’d been replaced. It’s worse. You’ve been targeted. It seems word of your survival was not so well kept as it should have been.” 

Targeted. Woken in the middle of the night. I tilt my head back and see the drawn, exhausted line of my dam’s mouth. There are more lines around her eyes than there were this morning. “… you’re sending me away.” 

“It’s all we can do.” 

“I could face whatever it is. I could continue to protect my girls, do my job. I’ve nearly recovered enough to retake my post. This is what I’ve been working towards. Let Heracles come once more and die upon my fangs! Let him come and give us the revenge Nym deserves.” 

My dam cups my cheeks, claws digging into the soft, thin scales just under my jaw. “Oh, my precious hatchling, my little dragon, you would. You have too much honor to abandon even a post that you have been told to leave behind.” 

“Dam…” 

Cetus kisses my forehead, just past where my crown of horns gives way to soft brown hair. 

“Listen.” And I do.  
_ 

My dam’s magic is insidious, as cool as the waters we live in as it slips from her throat and down into mine, settling like a heavy ball at the base of my throat. She hands me off to my nest-sire with a barely heard sob, and Tritanius pulls me into his arms with an eagerness I have not seen since I still bore my milk teeth. I lay lax, my body incapable of movement, as he swims out of our home and up, up through the depthless and hungry ocean. The water breaks over our heads as he breaches near the cliffs just off our home island. On land, I’m harder for him to carry, and he sets me on my feet with a whispered command to follow him. I feel my dam’s magic spread down my spine, and I can’t even sob as my feet move on their own to do so. 

The beach is all sharp little rocks and rugged boulders, but neither my sire nor I are soft-footed humans. The stones press against the thick scales on the bottoms of our feet, but the sharp edges merely scrap against chitinous plating. I wish that it would hurt; maybe it would break me free from my dam’s control, and I could run back into the sea. They’re stealing from me my chance for revenge – my chance for Nym to get revenge, to make the Man’s blood pool on sand and stone and in between my claws – but it’s for nothing. My mother is no Siren, and her voice’s control cannot be broken so easily as theirs can. 

My sire leads me up, past the beach, into the scrubby, short bushes and stringy grasses of the land. The air shift from the sweet cleanness of salty ocean to rotted fish, and I nearly gag. Even that is beyond me, now. Titanious keeps looking back at me, pale eyes narrowed in worry, but he doesn’t stop. 

I wish I could speak and beg him not to do this. Will my dam keep me under sway until Heracles gives up on me? Will she send me to Circe, to be one of her pets, deprived of my mind just for the knowledge that my body survives? 

No, I realize as a man steps into sight. 

He is tall, for something Man-shaped, with thin shoulders and long legs. His eyes are the pale of a clear summer day, the sclera buttermilk pale. The hands wrapped tight around his walking stick are twisted and scarred. 

It’s easier to watch those hands than it is to watch my sire draw the strange Hellenist into his arms, pressing a lipless kiss to a temple covered in fine blonde hair. The Hellenist pulls away first, gently pushing my sire off. Do sire and dam know about him? They must. I can smell him, high mountain air, ozone, flowers, and under that the musk of mortals and roads, sweet ichor. The blood of the gods runs through him. 

Tritanius makes a keening noise high in his chest when the god gently dislodges his claws from the god’s faded red chiton. He sounds like a dam whose eggs never hatched, or a widow just made, not a Mer with a half dozen near-grown hatchlings and two well-turned mates. 

“I’ll take him through, Tri, but I can’t follow. I can’t make sure he’s safe.” The Hellenist gestures me forward, and my sire reaches behind to wrap a cool hand around my arm and pull me forwards. 

“Direct commands,” Tritanius instructs him. “Until he’s through the veil.” 

He shouldn’t have told a stranger that, he shouldn’t be giving this godling that sort of power over me, but he is. He’s handing me off to this Olympian bastard -! 

A sob rises in my chest, hot and clenching, only to be cooled by my dam’s magic. It settles in my stomach instead, making it ache, and my steps stumble as the man’s hot skin touches me, his callouses thick as my own. He’s wrapped a hand around the back of my neck, and he uses it to guide me up the hill and deeper onto the island. No commands. Not yet. It’s only a matter of time with the ichor monster. 

He leads me up, until sand and scrub give way to thin, whippy trees that block out the beach behind me. I stare down at our feet. Mine are bare, long black claws digging into the soft ground. His are wrapped in leather sandals, wings etched into the straps. There aren’t many Men who wear sandals and fewer gods. 

I don’t see it until I try to steal a glance at his face. 

Echidna was mated with a veil in her hair; it was a linen so fine it was hardly more opaque than glass, and it had shimmered like there was light caught in the filaments with every turn of her head. We’d claimed it from a wreck passing through the strait, from a ship with blue hull. In the water it had moved and flowed like a living thing, an extension of my sister’s grand reptilian body as Typhus had wrapped his tentacles around her body and sworn to be mated and loyal until the oceans swallowed the world. 

The spot where Hermes stops looks just the same as that silvered veil my sister had worn: silvered and glimmering, a rising and falling, breathing edge to the world. Hermes eases the tip of his staff until the veil, pulling it aside just enough for someone my size to slip through. Smoke belches out of the ragged wound in the world. It smells like rot and eggs, red sparks spinning out and rising up, up, into the black sky. “Go, boy. I can’t hold it forever.” 

It’s the magic that forces my legs forwards. The fabric of the universe rasps over my scales as I step through, and the last thing I hear before the curtain falls and my dam’s magic runs out is Hermes’s whispered blessing. “Stay safe, little dragon, and get to where you’re going.”


End file.
